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CR's avatar

Thank you for the writeup and for sharing it with all of us. Love following through your thought process and really appreciate the detailed analysis.

My channel checks (primarily friends who are merchants in the various platforms in Indonesia) are telling me that Tiktok Shop is gaining significant momentum in Indonesia and encroaching Shopee's territory with short form videos being a channel that has/is continuing to grow rapidly and also arguably a suitable and attractive one especially in the categories that Shopee excels in (fashion, beauty, etc). Curious if you've given any thought on this?

Would also love to look at the model if you can share it. Email is clinton.rezeki@gmail.com

Thank you again. Really appreciate it.

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AV's avatar

Thank you for this detailed deep dive. Extremely helpful! I am with you on the Garena and Shopee assessment, but have my skepticism on the Sea money business.

In general, I find that in markets esp. in EMs where banks also have pretty decent wallet or similar offerings, it is tough for tech players to gain a significant share without offering promotions - A good example may be PayTM in India - It may be controversial a comment but I really don't find their business model sustainable if they were to stop offering all the promotions and cash back. Similarly, for digital bank to gain scale - its a big question too! I think the capital arbitrage between banks and digital banks will be closed over time through regulations and I simply find it hard to have faith in tech companies (using balance sheet capital to lend) to survive lending cycles. Time will tell I guess.

But thank you again for this great write up! As well as the scenario assessment.

One suggestion - Since you have looked into the market dynamics already, perhaps take a look at GRAB too? Esp. after the de-spac, stock has come off to more realistic valuations and may be an interesting super app to study :)

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